Gender and subject choice

• Boys still tend to opt for subjects such as maths and physics while girls are more likely to choose modern languages
• The National Curriculum gives pupils little freedom to choose or drop subjects by making most subjects compulsory until 16
• National curriculum options


  • Design and technology (compulsory)
  • Food technology (girls' choice)
  • Graphics (boys' choice)
  • Resistant materials (boys' choice)
• AS and A levels


  • Maths and physics (boys' choice)
  • Sociology and English (girls' choice)
• The proportion of A-level physics students who are girls has been "stubbornly consistent", at around 20%, for over 20 years
• This calls into question the effectiveness of policies such as WISE and GIST aimed at encouraging girls to take up subjects such as physics
• Gender segregation is a very noticeable feature of vocational training – one in 100 childcare apprentices is a boy
• Gender role socialisation

  From an early age, boys and girls are dressed differently, given different toys, and encouraged to take part in different activities
• Gender domains

  The tasks and activities that boys and girls see as male or female 'territory' and therefore as relevant to themselves
• Children are more confident when engaging in tasks that they see as part of their own gender domain
• Boys focus on how things are made and work, while girls focus more on how people feel
• Science is seen as a boys' subject

  • Science teachers are more likely to be men
  • The examples teachers use, and those in textbooks, often draw on boys' rather than girls' interests
  • In science lessons, boys monopolise the apparatus and dominate the laboratory, acting as if it is 'theirs'
• Computer studies is seen as a masculine subject

  • It involves working with machines – part of the male gender domain
  • The way it is taught is off-putting to females. Tasks tend to be abstract and teaching styles formal, with few opportunities for group work, which girls' favour
• Pupils who attend single-sex schools tend to hold less stereotyped subject images and make less traditional subject choices
• Girls in girls' schools were more likely to take maths and science, and boys in all-boys' schools would take subjects such as English
• Girls in single-sex state schools were 2.4 times more likely to take A-level physics than those in mixed schools
• Gender identity and peer pressure

  Pupils see sport as mainly within the male gender domain, so girls who are 'sporty' must cope with an image that contradicts the conventional female stereotype. Male students would call girls 'lesbian' or 'butch' if they appeared to be interested in sport
• Peer pressure is a powerful influence on gender identity and how pupils see themselves in relation to subjects. In mixed schools, peers' police one another's subject choices so that girls and boys adopt an appropriate gender identity, with girls pressured to avoid subjects such as physics
• The absence of boys in single-sex schools may mean there is less pressure on girls to conform to restrictive stereotypes of what subjects they can study
• Gendered career opportunities

  Women's jobs often involve work similar to that performed by housewives, such as childcare and nursing. Women are concentrated in a narrow range of occupations
• This sex-typing of occupations affects boys' and girls' ideas about what kinds of job are possible or acceptable
• Working-class pupils may make decisions about vocational courses that are based on a traditional sense of gender identity
• The school was implicitly steering girls towards certain types of job – and hence certain types of vocational course – through the work experience placements it offered them
• Hegemonic masculinity

  The dominance of heterosexual masculine identity and the subordination of female and gay identities
• Double standards

  Boys boast about their own sexual exploits but call a girl a 'slag' if she doesn't have a steady boyfriend or if she dresses and speaks in a certain way
• Feminists see these double standards as an example of a patriarchal ideology that justifies male power and devalues women
• Verbal abuse

  A rich vocabulary of abuse is one of the ways in which dominant gender and sexual identities are reinforced. Labels such as 'gay', 'queer' and 'lezzie' are used to police pupils' sexual identities
• The male gaze

  The way male pupils and teachers look girls up and down, seeing them as sexual objects and making judgements about their appearance. This is a form of surveillance through which dominant heterosexual masculinity is reinforced and femininity devalued
• Boys in anti-school subcultures often accuse boys who want to do well at school of being gay or effeminate
• Being popular was crucial to the identity of 13–14-year-old working-class girls. They had to choose between an idealised feminine identity and a sexualised identity that involved competing for boys
• Girls who are too competitive and/or think themselves better than their peers risk 'slut shaming', while girls who don't compete for boyfriends may face 'frigid shaming'
• Girls who want to be successful educationally may feel the need to conform to the school's notion of the ideal feminine pupil identity, which involved presenting themselves as lacking any interest in boyfriends or popular fashion
• Male teachers told boys off for 'behaving like girls' and teased them when they gained lower marks in tests than girls. Teachers tended to ignore boys' verbal abuse of girls and even blamed girls for attracting it
• Male teachers' protective attitude towards female colleagues, coming into their classes to 'rescue' them, reinforced the idea that women cannot cope alone